Sunday, January 03, 2016

2015: The Ride: The Drink: The Flavorless Paste aka My Year as a Human, My Favorite Music of the Year, and Some Shameless Self-Promo

Hey blog reader(s),
2015 is over, so I thought I'd take the
opportunity on what Neil DeGrasse Tyson would consider an arbitrary date
to overshare about me, present a list of my favorite records and live
shows of the past year, and pimp my rock band.
I had a weird year
that was better for me mentally than almost any year since I was nine
years old (excepting 1997 and late 1999/early 2000, the two other
post-fourth grade years where I wasn't hit with at least one bout of
depression) but also touched by tragedy. My group of friends lost a
wonderful person to cancer in May, a person who should have lived to be a
hilarious old woman, and we all miss her and will continue to miss her
for the rest of our go-cart ride around this globally-warmed fucked-up
orb where Donald Trump still walks among us. I also lost a cousin to
cancer that same month, but my father never told me so I just found out
two weeks ago (not from him). In case you were wondering if my family
was still a jacked-up mess, the Magic 8-Ball says it is decidedly so. In
happier circle of life news, my sister had twins, a boy and girl, in
September, and they're as cute as (or even cuter than) tiny people can
possibly be, even though I think all humans should cool it on the having
babies thing for at least 30 or 40 years because WE'RE DOOMED! WE'RE
ALL DOOMED!!!!!!!! but I am excited to see them in person on a trip
planned for the spring, and I'm psyched to have a niece and nephew at
one fell swoop (maybe the fell swoop thing is not the best choice of
phrase since it originated from birds of prey diving down for the kill).
I
was amazed and thankful I spent a whole year without much depression (I
had lots of melancholia and genuine sadness, but none of the full-on
emptiness and lack of emotion and couch-stuck wasted days and wrung-out
towel for a psyche that swallow up a few months of most years), and I
attribute a lot of that to a years-in-the-making concerted effort to
live in the present. Sounds obvious and platitudinous, but I think I'm
mostly there now. I wasted too much time rehashing and being bitter
about the past and thinking about getting through the present to get to
some imagined better time in the future, and I mostly don't bother with
that shit now. Fuck the past, the future doesn't exist, yeah I know
these sound like bumper stickers but in practice this attitude really
works for me sentence fragment the end. I also decided to devote less
psychic real estate to my parents' problems and messes and all the
messiness and weirdness of the last 13 years in my family's existence and focus on fixing
my own problems and messes. And I decided to skip most parties this
year except for a handful of important ones because large social
gatherings make me nervous and antsy and self-conscious and weird and I
never have much fun and no one's paying me to attend, so I treated
myself right and went out when I felt like it and stayed home when I
felt like it. My friends are cool. I think they understand. I still like
all of them. I also quit Facebook, which is really working out great,
even though I still log in on my wife's account, but I've been doing
that less and less. I am happier not being on there as much. Also,
listening to albums in their entirety away from a computer, reading more
books, and watching less TV are all good decisions I made for myself
this year. It's working, man. I think the key to life is don't do shit
you don't wanna do if you don't have to do it. Do shit you wanna do if
you can. Try not to screw anybody up when not doing and doing these
things. I don't do new year's resolutions, but the next step on the
be-less-messed-up train is an effort to slow down my boozing and get rid
of my beer gut that taunts me in the mirror daily and be more healthy
even though exercise is boring as fuck and completely stupid compared to
things like rock and roll and delicious food.
Enough of this self-help bullshit, let's switch to music.

Records of 2015 I also enjoyed, just not as much as the above
Zu - Cortar Todo
Trickfinger - Trickfinger
Wilco - Star Wars
Neil Young & Promise of the Real - The Monsanto Years
Rolo Tomassi - Grievances
Mac DeMarco - Another One (yeah, yeah, everyone hates him now, he's the latest indie scarlet letter, but I like the dirtbag low-rent Steely Dan vibe)

The band I play drums for, The Early Stages, put out our second 7-inch this year. We got a nice review from Byron Coley in Wire magazine, a pretty good review in Maximum Rocknroll, and some airplay on Jon Solomon's radio show on WPRB in New Jersey, the Expressway to Yr Skull podcast, and a few other podcasts and websites. Otherwise, zilch. I feel good about the music on this single, and I feel pretty good about my band, even though we can't get arrested in this town or most other places. You can buy/stream/hear this thing and our previous 7-inch at http://www.theearlystagesmusic.com/ and https://theearlystages.bandcamp.com/

About Me

Dr. Mystery, aka Robot X, aka Raul "Sous Chef" Mendoza, aka Josh Krauter was killed in a brawl in a Pizza Hut parking lot after expressing his disappointment with the "Dippin' Strips" pizza. His skeleton was saved and inserted into an apesuit-wearing robot powered by an electrical current emanating from the still-beating heart of deceased actor Zero Mostel. He is also a limited liability company and writes the weekly advice column, "Pull Your Head Outta Your Ass," for the Vermont Luthiers Annual Newsletter.